Fennville begins football season at midnight, will change offensive systems

Monday

Aug 11, 2014 at 4:45 PMAug 11, 2014 at 4:45 PM

By Michael.Appelgate@hollandsentinel.com(616) 546-4271

A little more than a half hour before practice started, players started to arrive at the Fennville football field as sprinklers ran on half of the field.That didn’t stop those gathered from tossing the pig skin around as the moon dipped behind the clouds, and the stadium lights illuminated wide grins.The Fennville football team was the first area program to begin preseason practices early Monday morning, midnight-2 a.m. About 25 participated in shorts and t-shirts, and about a dozen wore helmets through agility and passing drills.“The kids have a lot of energy and it gets us off to a great start right away,” Blackhawks coach Brian Sackett said. “You can kind of see how committed they are if they come out and show up at midnight on Sunday and practice. There are kids who showed up tonight that I haven’t seen all summer.”This was the second time Sackett has held midnight practices to kickoff the football season. Coming off a 2-7 season last year — the second consecutive 2-7 season — the Blackhawks want to use every method to turn the program around.“I like being around my teammates again, seeing everyone together,” said junior lineman Johnathon Willey. “Playing under the lights is awesome. We have a brotherhood around here and it helps us out.”The Blackhawks are embarking on a steep task to flip its run-focused Wing-T system to a spread offense. Sackett is making the switch because what he thought would be the strength of last year’s team, big linemen, was hampered with injuries and Fennville struggled mightily to keep up with teams in the second half.“I was kind of married to the Wing-T,” Sackett, a 1998 Fennville graduate, said. “I ran it all in high school and the first couple of years here. I just went to work myself and said I’m going to figure this out and spread the field as much as we can.”If the Blackhawks can make the switch by the first game of the season Aug. 28 at Lawton, expect to see points pile up on the scoreboard. If there is one advantage the team has it is there are highly talented athletes who are ready to catch the ball.Most notably, basketball standouts Aaron Overhiser and Cejay Svay will be top threats. Fellow hardwood teammate Mitchell Leonard will be the quarterback again, and that might carry a question mark as he will need to adjust to thwoing the ball far more than he has in his career.“I try not to be that hard on him about his mechanics but he’s getting there,” Sackett, in his third season as coach, said. “Right now, we’re not getting the ball out as quick as I thought we would by now.“Nobody is expecting much out of us and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for us to get good at it.”